


Where the Sky Meets the Sea

by DreamsOfSleep



Series: Mars Landing [3]
Category: New Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, F/M, Future!Jess, Future!Nick, Science Fiction, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-06-10 07:45:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 10,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6946222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6808741/chapters/15547156">"Moving Heaven and Earth to Find You"</a> told from Jess's perspective</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ask Me To Stay

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a reference to this quote: "Meet me where the sky touches the sea. Wait for me where the world begins." - Jennifer Donnelly, _The Winter Rose_
> 
> If you are reading this fic, you most likely have already read the original fic, "Moving Heaven and Earth to Find You." I have two goals with this companion piece:
> 
>   * Show that Jess loved Nick just as much as he loved her. On the actual show, I think we get much more of Nick's perspective than Jess's perspective about their relationship so it can often feel one-sided or seem like Nick loved Jess a whole lot more than she loved him. It's good to get into her headspace and see what she is thinking during the same events. (Fingers crossed that they show Jess chasing Nick on S6 of the actual show!)
>   * Make Ryan into a three-dimensional character. Just because Jess married Ryan doesn't mean she loved Nick less but he wasn't ready for her yet. Like most things in life, relationships are often all about timing. During the "Mars Landing" fight, Jess was telling Nick, "I'm ready for our future," but he wasn't able to say "I am too" even though he loved her. He needed to choose to believe in himself, to see that he was enough, so he could choose her too. Jess couldn't stay with Nick if he wasn't able to say that so Jess's relationship with Ryan, the "good on paper" guy, was about seeing how she was strong enough to support Nick too, about what it meant to love him back. And then when they both have those life experiences and realize what they want, they can form a new relationship, "where the world begins" again.
> 


**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wanted him to ask her to stay.

She is sitting side by side with Nick on her bed when she breaks the news to him.

“Ryan asked me to move to England with him.” She can’t look at him when she tells him, but she wishes he would look at her. "What do you think I should do, Nick?"

"What do you want to do, Jess?" he asks her. She can tell he is trying to keep his voice carefully neutral.

She goes for practical: "They'll never make me principal at this school, will they? Ryan says I can become a teacher at his private school. I could go back to teaching kids again."

"Is that what you want, Jess?" He still won’t look at her but she can hear the pain in his voice.

She shrugs and goes for casual. "I should want to move on. I should want to grow up." She pauses and adds almost as an afterthought, "Plus, he loves me.” Her head turns to look at him and she says it again, her voice filling with emotion, “He loves me, Nick." Inside she is thinking, _Tell me you love me too, Nick. Ask me to stay._ Begging him with her eyes to hear her.

She sees him swallow hard once and force himself to look at her face, directly into her eyes. "Then you should do it, Jess. If he makes you happy, then you should go."

She smiles sadly. _He still can’t tell me how he feels, and I can’t stay if he can’t. I was wrong about our future, about making him fit into a box, but he didn’t fight for us. Why didn’t you fight for us, Nick?_

She makes her decision.

\---

Her friends drive her to the airport in somber silence. At the airport, she hugs all her friends one last time. When she reaches Nick, she looks up into his face. _Tell me you still love me. Ask me to stay._ She begs him with her eyes one last time, but she can see him shut her out. She goes to put her arms around him and he crushes her to him. His body says what his heart can’t. _I love you more than I have ever loved anyone. Please stay._ But neither of them are brave enough to say the words. Instead he says, "Bye, Jess. Have a safe trip." And she says, "Bye, Nick, I'll write you," through her tears.

She goes through the metal detectors and takes Ryan’s hand on the other side. She turns around once to wave and imagines her old life growing small and distant as she walks away from her friends through the airport and into her new life with Ryan.


	2. Where She Went

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jess's life in England.

She writes to him, but he doesn’t write back. She tries calling him, but he never picks up. In a dejected voice, Schmidt tells her to let Nick go so they can both move on and be happy. After three months, she does.

\---

Ryan takes her home to meet his family. She stares wide-eyed as they approach his family’s giant estate, like a deer caught in headlights. When she meets his family, they are all incredibly nice and gracious towards her, but she can’t help feeling small and dirty next to them with her thrift store clothes and second-hand luggage. She feels uncomfortable and out of place but she pastes on a smile for Ryan and pretends she is having a good time. She pretends she does this sort of thing every day.

_Yup, Jessica Day totally visits mansions every day and eats off fancy silverware and remembers which fork to use for every dinner course._

_Of course she knows how to ride a polo horse and she definitely knows how to play._

_She definitely goes on yachts all the time; they never make her seasick._

_She literally goes to these fancy social balls every weekend._

She can’t help wishing Nick were there with her. She smiles at the thought of him making fun of the pretentiousness of ‘rich yuppies’ to make her laugh and how he would grab her hand and sneak her off to drink with him somewhere on the grounds where no one would find them, so they could hang out just the two of them.

\---

She meets the faculty at Wellington Prep and they can’t stop raving about Ryan. She meets her perfectly behaved students in their neatly pressed private school uniforms who call her “Ms. Day” in their adorable British accents. The school seems like a fantasy, like being a teacher at Hogwarts. It’s so perfectly perfect that she starts to feel useless after a while; she is too used to putting out disasters at her old school that she doesn’t feel needed here. There are no “diamond-in-the-rough” students who need her special attention to shine; they are all shooting stars with or without her there. She thinks she is just being spoiled though, making up reasons to complain because she is homesick and wants to see her friends. She knows that any other teacher would kill to be in her shoes.

\---

She goes sightseeing with Ryan in England. 

He takes her to Buckingham Palace and Big Ben and Westminster Abbey and Hyde Park.

He takes her to visit castles and they go on numerous historical tours because he knows she is a history geek.

He takes her to fancy restaurants to eat trendy London cuisine and to the West End to walk through art galleries and to see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform theatre.

She can see in his eyes that he worries about her. He knows that she is homesick and he is doing his best to cheer her up. She appreciates that he makes the effort.

\---

Despite everything being perfect in her new life in England, the entire time she just wants to be able to pick up the phone and talk to Nick, to hear his raspy voice speak to her with the affection he saves just for her. She misses him terribly.

Even though Ryan pretty much fits the definition of “perfect boyfriend” to a T, the fact that he is so perfect and flawless sometimes makes her chafe. He’s just a little _too_ perfect and she doesn’t know exactly how she fits into his life sometimes other than checking off the box for “girlfriend.” He’s a good, attentive boyfriend, but she feels like she can never really relax around him, like he would be floored by discovering the true weirdo she is if she unleashed her entire true self, instead of this modified version of Jessica Day who is always on her best behavior around his rich family and private school colleagues.

Ryan is always mild-mannered and sweet; he never argues with her. He’s attractive and affectionate but he never makes her feel the same way that Nick did just from looking at her from across a room, warming her body all over with his eyes.

She lies awake at night and thinks she was just in love with the idea of love, that she said _‘I love you’_ to Ryan too soon because she was hurting and needed someone to love her back when Nick shut her out.

But Ryan is a good man and he loves her. He can tell her how he feels and he has a traditional bank account and he thinks about the future. He is perfect on paper; he is who she is supposed to end up with. So she shoves her feelings down, locks them away deep inside herself, and tries to be the perfect girlfriend to him because she already made her choice. She already went to England and Nick didn’t come chasing after her. He didn’t even want her in his life anymore.

\---

When Ryan asks her to marry him after a year of living their perfect life in England, she only hesitates for a second before she says yes. 

And even though she hasn’t spoken with him for over a year, she still writes an invitation for Nick and hopes beyond hope that he will come to the wedding. She still wants to keep him in her life. She hopes he remembers that they promised to still be friends after they broke up.

She cries herself to sleep for two weeks when she gets his RSVP marked “declines with regrets.”


	3. You Broke My Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events on the eve of Jess and Ryan's wedding and on their wedding day.

She thinks maybe Nick just got the invitation at a bad time, when he was in a bad mood. He is just being childish and stubborn, but he will change his mind. He’s still the guy with the biggest heart she knows and he has always been a firm believer of being a guy that shows up. The invitation doesn’t matter; he’ll just show up and surprise her and they’ll laugh at how silly both of them have been. They will be just like _them_ again and it will be just like old times, like before they started dating. Nick will definitely be at her wedding, she convinces herself.

The day before the wedding her entire wedding party has flown in, minus Nick, and is rooming at Ryan’s family’s estate. She keeps furtively glancing over at the main doors of the mansion. She is still holding out hope for a last minute appearance by him. _‘His flight probably got delayed. He’ll show up really late tonight or right before the ceremony starts tomorrow. He must be so anxious that he’ll miss my big day,’_ she thinks to herself.

She can feel Schmidt’s eyes on her back the whole night before the wedding. He keeps glancing at her and then glancing away when she tries to catch his eye. She occupies herself with making small talk with Ryan’s sisters. She sees Schmidt set his jaw and finally approach her.

“I need to talk to you, Jess.” 

“Can it wait, Schmidt?” She really doesn’t want to leave the front entrance and miss Nick.

“Jess, it’s important.” She has never seen him look more serious.

She grabs his wrist and leads him into the library.

\---

Schmidt takes a while to speak. He first busies himself with making an old-fashioned at the library bar.

He hands it to her and they sit across from each other in the high-backed leather chairs of the library.

Schmidt takes a deep breath and then says, “Nick’s not coming to the wedding, Jess.”

She feels tears start to well up behind her eyes. “Is he mad at me?”

“He’s not mad at you, Jess…He says he’s sorry. He’s just not here.”

“Well where is he?”

Schmidt looks away from her. “He got accepted to be an astronaut for the Mars Program. He left 10 days ago.”

Her chest feels tight. She feels a vise on her heart. “When is he coming back?” she asks faintly. 

“He’s not, Jess…” Schmidt says sadly. “He’s staying to help build colonies on Mars.”

She feels her heart shatter into a million little pieces. “He didn’t even let me say goodbye to him,” she chokes out. _Maybe Nick didn’t want to be her friend anymore or come to her wedding, but Nick didn’t even let her say goodbye to him, and now she’ll never get to see him again._

Tears slowly start streaming down her face and before long her body is wracked with sobs. Schmidt holds her while she cries her heart out.

Later, Cece helps Schmidt get her into bed. Schmidt stays outside her bedroom door and makes sure no one disturbs her while Cece stays in bed with her and rubs her back until she falls asleep.

\---

The next day her wedding is picture perfect. She has the perfect white satin gown and pink roses are woven in her hair. Ryan looks like he stepped out of a wedding magazine in his fine luxe wool charcoal suit with the chic black tie and red pocket square. The outside ceremony is beautiful. It’s a perfect spring day. The sun is shining brightly in the cloudless blue sky and there is just a hint of a breeze. They say their pre-written vows and kiss chastely. Ryan sheds a few tears; she is dry-eyed so she doesn’t ruin her makeup. They walk back down the aisle as husband and wife while everyone cheers and throws rice. Everyone raves about the haute cuisine Ryan picked out and their six-tier chocolate mousse wedding cake with cascading fondant flowers. Everyone is happy and smiling. They all congratulate her and tell her that she and Ryan look like the perfect couple.

She pastes on a smile and thanks everyone for their kind words, but her mind can’t seem to care about any of the details of her wedding day. All she can think about through the entire day is Nick out there all alone in the universe without her, without anyone.


	4. My Life Without You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jess's life with Ryan while Nick was living on Mars Landing.

She has been married to Ryan for one year.

She catches him staring longingly at baby carriages when they take strolls through the park. They go to their friends’ baby showers and she watches his fingers trace the shape of future children on sonograms before handing them back. They visit their friends in hospitals starting new families and she watches him hold their tiny pink and blue bundles of joy, closing his eyes to breathe in their new baby smell. Every time she thinks about it, it makes her physically sick. 

Her mind can’t accept Ryan as the father of her children.

\---

She lies awake at night and thinks about the fight that she and Nick had about the future.

She still remembers the bewildered, wide-eyed stare Nick had given her when she had blurted out her visions of what their future life might be like: their kids on Christmas morning, the house by the lake they share together. It was as if his brain had shorted out at the mere mention of it, like he was terrified. 

The frightened look on his face had caused her still half-drunk self to start rambling about a demented nonsensical made-up future in Portland just to fill the empty space of his silence.

When Nick’s brain finally caught up to her words and he registered the disappointed look on her face, in typical Nick Miller fashion, he tried to cheer her up by joking around. He kept babbling on about a made-up future on Mars that had no bearing on reality, desperately wanting her to lighten up and return to the way they had been just the previous day before: crazy in love with each other and not asking the tough questions about their future that he couldn’t answer, back when it had only mattered that he loved her. 

It had hurt her that Nick had never given any serious thought to their future. She had no doubt that he loved her, but he was telling her he couldn’t see a future with her. He was perfectly content to just remain boyfriend and girlfriend forever. He didn’t want to start a family or a life together somewhere outside the loft, but she did. She realized in that moment that they had an expiration date. The life that they were currently living in the loft was as real of a life that he could ever give to her, that he could see himself sharing with her. But she needed more from him…not just ‘I love you,’ but ‘I think about it too…I think about the rest of my life with you in it.’ There was no space for her in his future life. 

She had felt like she was drowning and had a meltdown, freaking out at him and bombarding him with her fears about not having anything in common, about love not being enough for them to survive as a couple. She kept waiting for him to argue back against everything that she was throwing at him, to fight for them like he had always fought for them before when she got scared or over-analytical or obsessive about the details of her life plan, and it had hurt her that he had been the one who suggested that they should break up. He was the one taking it back; he was running scared, terrified of losing her but at the same time terrified of being abandoned, shutting himself away from her the way he had before his love for her made him brave enough to reach out to her, his panic-stricken eyes telling her, _‘Let’s just be friends again, Jess. Let’s be the way we were, that’s what’s comfortable, that’s what makes sense for us. I take everything back.’_ And she had found herself hungover and clutching the pieces of her shattered dreams of their future together, their shards piercing her heart, wanting to comfort him and her eyes responding back to his with, _‘It’s okay, Nick. Don’t cry. You’re not your father and you didn’t lose me because you screwed up. I know you love me. It’s okay if this is all you want, all you can give me. We can just be friends again. I take everything back too.’_

\---

It had hurt her deeply that Nick had never thought about having kids with her. Her whole life, despite all the men she has dated and the boyfriends she has had, serious or otherwise, she had never seriously considered any of them to be “father material” until Nick. She thought about kids in the general sense whenever she had been with other guys, but it was only when she was with Nick that she would have visions of him as a dad in the gray fuzz before she drifted off to sleep with his arms curled around her.

_Him holding their newborn baby girl in the hospital as the baby gripped his fingers with her tiny hands. Him falling asleep in their living room with their infant son on his chest. Him teaching their kids to ride their first bicycles through the park and kissing their boo-boos when they fell down. Him holding the hands of a little boy and a little girl as they walked to school. Him dancing with their daughter on her wedding day. Him sitting at the head of their table at Thanksgiving and Christmas, surrounded by the warmth of his children and their children and his great-grandchildren, his eyes soft with love._

She could never shake those images even after they broke up. Every time she tried to imagine having children with anyone else, any of the numerous guys she had dated after they broke up, her mind would always play the words: _It was supposed to be Nick. He was supposed to be here._

In her mind’s eye, she keeps seeing a little boy with Nick’s eyes and a little girl with Nick’s smile and it feels like a betrayal. She tells Ryan she doesn’t want to have children. He looks at her sadly but says he understands.

\---

On their first anniversary, Ryan surprises her with a trip to Portland. She hasn’t been back to America in over two years and is ecstatic to be able to see her family and friends in her hometown. She tells him it’s the perfect gift and his eyes light up knowing that he has made her truly happy.

When they arrive in Portland he drives her down a quiet, tree-lined street and tells her he has another surprise for her. At the end of the street, they stop in front of a lake house. It’s exactly like the one she envisioned in her dreams. They get out of their rental car and he takes her hand. He leads her to the front porch and unlocks the door. Inside, warm light spills through the windows and it smells like cider. She lets go of Ryan’s hand and walks into the middle of the living room, just taking in the view of the house. She turns around to face him again, still standing by the open front door.

“It’s ours, Jess,” Ryan says. His voice is filled with emotion. “I know you missed your family and friends while we have been living in England. I want us to move here so you can be closer to them.” His eyes say, _‘Please, please, like it.’_

Her face breaks out into a radiant smile. She runs back over to him and throws her arms around his neck hugging him tightly to her. “It’s perfect,” she says. 

\---

Ryan shows her his business plan for founding their own Montessori school in Portland. He says that she can be the principal while he can be the business manager and they can create the school of their dreams. She reaches over to squeeze his hand and feels the hope for their future warm her from the inside out. 

They spend the next two years working on creating their new school. Ryan works on fundraising, attends networking events for education administrators, and seeks out his former education colleagues in England for advice on managing their new school. She works on writing curriculum, interviewing teachers, and gathering local community support for their school in Portland. 

On the long-awaited day of their school’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, she looks at the plaque on the front of the school with her and Ryan’s names on it and thinks fleetingly of Nick and how he had always believed in her, believed that she would make it as an educator. She wishes he were here in person to see this, to share in her success. 

\---

One day she hears on the news that Mars was able to establish a telecommunications system with Earth. With this new technology, the world governments are working to establish an intergalactic postal service as well as civilian flights to Mars. 

\---

She hasn’t seen or spoken to Nick in over two years. She still wants so badly to pick up the phone to call him or send him a letter but she doesn’t think she is allowed to. She thinks she is just afraid to hear that he’s moved on when she hasn’t, afraid to hear about his wife and his children and his life without her. 

She knows Schmidt keeps in contact with Nick. She sees letters on his office desk addressed to Nick at a PO Box on Mars Landing and she sees Nick’s messy scrawl once writing him back. 

She knows Winston keeps in contact with Nick. She sees him flipping through a brochure for the Mars Intergalactic Space Station that only astronauts are allowed to get when he thinks she isn’t looking. 

\---

Winston calls her from Las Vegas one day and excitedly tells her he eloped with Aly. For some reason, she gets the feeling that Nick had something to do with it. 

\---

She and Ryan do couples’ dates and couples’ vacations with Schmidt and Cece. Schmidt is always polite to Ryan but she can see there is a wall there; him trying to remain loyal to both her and Nick, trying to keep the peace. He pastes on a frozen smile when she tells him about her and Ryan’s new lake house in Portland, but he hugs her and tells her he is glad she is moving back to the US so that he and Cece and their kids can see her more often.

\---

She and Ryan live an idyllic life in the lake house in Portland. She thinks that this life is exactly what she saw in her head when she thought about her "life plan" of the future, but after living in the lake house for a while, it never seems to feel quite right. Like something is always missing. 

\---

She and Ryan rarely ever fight, but one day during an overeager fit of spring cleaning, he throws away the green paper bracelet Nick gave her in Mexico. When she runs frantically around the house looking for it, he mentions that he thinks he might have thrown it away. He is stunned when she starts crying and screaming at him. 

“How could you, Ryan?” she sobs. It hurts her like he just threw away a part of her soul. The last tiny fragile connection she had to Nick.

_I need it, so I know it was real._

As always, Ryan is even-tempered and deeply apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Jess, I didn’t know,” he says quietly, chagrined, looking down at his feet. 

She feels terrible. She goes over to him and gives him a hug. 

“It was an accident. It’s not your fault, Ryan; you didn’t know. I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

\---

She is able to find the green paper bracelet later in the bottom of the trash all crumpled up. She smooths it out and cleans it the best she can. She places it back in her memory box, safely hidden away in her crafts room. 


	5. The Apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The virus arrives in Portland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Historical, religious, and existential treatises suggest that for some persons at some times, it is rational not to avoid physical death at all costs. Indeed the spark of humanity can maximize its essence by choosing an alternative that preserves the greatest dignity and some tranquility of mind.” - Norman Mailer, _The Executioner's Song_

They hear about people turning into cannibals from a mysterious illness on the news, but the events seem surreal and far away. Portland feels safely insulated from the outbreaks happening on the other side of the country with its slow food and fast bicycles. Everyone in the community believes that their families will be safe here. 

Then children’s parents at Jess and Ryan’s school start turning.

\---

Everyone in America is in a mass panic and trying to secure a ticket to one of the civilian shuttles headed for Mars through one of the government lotteries. It is evident that not everyone will make it out.

Jess and Ryan shut down regular operations at their school and convert it into a refugee center for children in the community who have lost their parents to the disease.

\---

Jess hugs Cece and Schmidt and their children goodbye at the shuttle launch site in LA.

“Get out when you can, Jess,” Cece says to her tearfully.

Schmidt hesitates and then asks her, “Do you want me to give Nick a message?”

She squeezes her eyes shut in pain at the mention of his name and tears stream down her face. She wipes them away with the back of her hand. _She’ll wait to tell him everything in person. She doesn’t want to send him some cheap, secondhand sentiment after not speaking to him for years._

She opens her eyes again and looks directly into Schmidt’s worried gaze.

“If he asks, just tell him the truth.”

\---

A few weeks later, she hugs Winston and Aly as they prepare themselves to board a shuttle to become officers at the Mars Intergalactic Space Station.

“I’m so proud of you, Winston,” she says hugging him to her tightly.

“I hope we see you soon on Mars too, Jess,” he says. “The whole gang will be back together again. It will be just like old times.”

She thinks wistfully of those happy, simpler times living in the loft. How naïve she was that she thought that wasn’t enough _life_ for her back then. She would do anything to go back to that time if she could.

She gives Winston a tight smile. “Just like old times,” she echoes back.

She is thankful that her friends are safe on Mars even if she never gets to make it there.

\---

It turns out that everyone in Jess’s immediate family is immune to the airborne virus except for her dad, Bob. He falls deathly ill from the airborne virus and asks to see his family one last time.

His new wife Ashley lets the three women into the house when they arrive. She sits in a chair by Bob’s bedside and holds his hand. They just got married six months ago.

Bob is pale, sweating, and feverish but still coherent. His face is gaunt and the dark hollows of his cheeks and yellowish pallor of his skin are hard for his family to see. He is a shell of the jolly, boisterous, seemingly invincible man they have gone through life with. His family gathers around his bedside surrounding him with the warmth of their love.

Bob turns to his ex-wife. “Joanie,” he says. “I love you. I know we had our differences, but I wouldn’t change anything. Take care of our girls.” Joan kisses his cheek. “I love you too, Bob. Thank you for giving us our daughters. You were always a good father. Goodbye, Bob.”

Bob turns to his eldest daughter. “Abby,” he says. “You were always my wild child. I know we didn’t always see eye to eye on your choices, but you always made it home for Christmas. I love you and I’ll miss you.” Abby squeezes his hand. “I love you and I’ll miss you,” she echoes back to him through her tears.

“Jess,” he says. “My sweet baby girl Jessica. I’m glad you have Ryan to support you so you don’t have to be alone. Love and cherish each other.” Jess hugs him and kisses his cheek. “I love you, Dad. I’m glad you got the chance to dance with me on our wedding day. You don’t have to worry about me; I know I’ll always be your baby girl, but you were the one who first taught me how to be brave.” She wipes away a tear from his cheek. 

He finally turns to his wife. “Ashley,” he says. “I know we didn’t have very long together in our marriage, but I’ve never regretted a single day with you. I would do it all over again.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says fiercely. “If you turn, I’m the one that has to put the bullet in your head, not some government agent or some asshole trying to steal the last of our rations. I’m ride or die until the end.”

Bob squeezes her hand. “Just get yourself out when this is all over. Live for me.” 

They gaze into each other's eyes like they are the only two people in the room, the only two people left on Earth.

Bob’s family leaves Ashley by his bedside holding her gun, waiting for the inevitable. 

\---

At the front doors of Jess’s school, the three women turn to face each other.

Jess gestures to the building. “I’m staying here to make sure these children don’t die alone. I can’t leave them behind and the government won’t get them out. I know they just want us to shoot them, forget about them, all these children without families, without anyone, but I still care. Ryan and I will be their family. I love you both and I'll miss you.”

Abby says, “I have some friends that are traveling from city to city rescuing people from their homes. I was selfish for a long time and I want to make you and Dad and Jess proud of me so I’m going with them. If I don't make it out, remember that I love you. I just wanted to say that out loud before I forgot.”

Joan looks into the faces of her two only daughters. “My women’s commune is escaping into the mountains to keep civilization alive on Earth. We’re going to take care of the sick and the dying and anyone else that has been left behind, anyone who has no one left. The worst thing about this disease hasn’t been the zombies, the death, the dying; it’s been the loss of compassion. We want people to remember what it was like when you didn’t have to treat other people with fear and suspicion, but with love and kindness. I probably won’t see either of you again my sweet babies, but I love you and know that even if I’m gone and we never meet again on Earth, I’ll still be with you in the spirit of the world and in your heart.” 


	6. Sudden Turns For The Worse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened to Ryan from Jess's perspective. 
> 
> ***** Please note the archive warning for "graphic depictions of violence" *****

She and Ryan live in their school now providing a refuge for children without parents who can no longer go home. To prevent mass panic and paranoia, the government gave priority in the civilian shuttles to Mars to people who had no direct contact with the virus in their families. The 20 students who now live in their school were refused passage and told to fend for themselves the best they could. 

She tries to keep everyone’s spirits up the best she can. She pretends they are having one big slumber party at the school. They have footraces sliding down the hall in their bare socks and play hide and seek in the empty classrooms. They have themed movie nights in the school auditorium until the electricity dies and they have to use generators. Then they put on plays and act out their favorite parts by candlelight. They sit cross-legged in a circle on the ground and tell each other happy stories of the people they have lost. They draw pictures of what the world used to be and stick them on the walls so they don’t forget. Then they draw pictures of what they hope the world is like in the future when they can walk out in the sunshine again, a world without fear.

She and Ryan take turns leading the older students out to scavenge for food and supplies in the nearby communities. All the students hug one another before they leave and make jokes about taking field trips so the younger students never have to feel the constant fear of loss. It’s a thin illusion but everyone wants to believe in it. They take their homemade weapons and edge quietly back into the world to try and survive for another day.

\---

As more people make the exodus on the Mars shuttles, the neighborhoods slowly empty themselves of their human occupants. The zombies become more aggressive as their rabid hunger grows more acute. Traditionally feeding at dusk and into nightfall where the cover of darkness allows for easy prey, the zombies start emerging more and more frequently during the day, desperate to satisfy their intense, gnawing hunger.

\---

One day, Ryan’s group gets stalked by zombies on their return trip home from scavenging for food and supplies. Ryan quickly gets all the students inside and locks the exterior doors. What was initially 20 zombies quickly becomes hundreds as other zombies are drawn to the commotion at the school. They bang their mutilated hands at the doors and windows. The door locks can’t withstand the intense pressure of the zombie hordes and the doors start to bend inwards. The glass on the windows and doors starts to crack as the zombie hoards continue to claw at them. Jess and Ryan put the school into lockdown and have the students retreat into a classroom in the very interior of the building.

The students huddle under their desks and hum to themselves, waiting for the Bad to be over. One of Jess’s students says he isn’t feeling well. He was always prone to colds. She strokes his hair briefly and tells him to lay his head down on a desk and she’ll make him some soup. She leaves the student at his desk to help Ryan secure the doors and windows in the classroom. She sees the student get up and tug on Ryan’s sleeve. 

The student’s eyes used to be green five minutes ago but now they are flat and gray. He’s turning. “Ryan!” she yells. He turns around, but it’s too late. He screams as he gets bitten. The student clamps viciously onto his forearm. She runs over and shoots the student in the back of the head at point-blank range. He falls to the ground with open, glassy, blank eyes. The other children scream.

Ryan is grabbing at his sleeve, tearing it up to make a tourniquet to staunch the bleeding on his arm. They can hear the cracking of wood and glass shattering as the infected work their way into the building, getting closer and closer to their classroom.

“What do we do?” she asks Ryan with a desperate edge to her voice.

He is preternaturally calm. “Take the kids and get out through the garden entrance. I’ll distract them. I have ten shells left and I’ll try to take out as many as I can with the detonator. It’s wired through the roof.”

“No, Ryan,” she says desperately. “You have to come with us.” 

She reaches out for him but he puts up a hand to stop her.

“It’s over, Jess; I got bitten. But you can still get out with the kids. If I come after you, shoot me. Remember to shoot me in the head.”

The children look at her with their wide, frightened eyes and their tear-stained faces. She swallows her fears. She is responsible for these tiny lives now. 

“I love you, Ryan.” 

“I love you, too, Jess.” 

She opens the door of the classroom and sticks her head out. She can see the infected down the hallway pushing against a classroom door that is just about to give. This is their only chance. She herds the kids through the door ahead of her and they start running for the entrance doors. She hears gunshots behind her. A few minutes later she hears the click as the detonator is activated and then an explosion, but it’s too early, before they reach the doors. Pieces of the ceiling start falling around her and she gets knocked unconscious. 

When she comes to, she is alone. Her head is bleeding and the bodies of her students are crushed under large pieces of concrete.

She screams the primal scream of someone alone in the universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a reference to the Dan Mangan / Shane Koyczan collaboration of music and poetry called [“Tragic Turn of Events / Move Pen Move”](https://youtu.be/jHZ4xoNvcY8?t=31s), specifically this section:
> 
> _but we should've practiced our goodbyes_  
>  _because then it took your eyes and i was_  
>  _somewhere in the middle of nowhere_  
>  _watching the sun rise over a stop sign faced_  
>  _down the center line of a highway filled with_  
>  _sudden turns for the worse._
> 
> It is still one of the most tragically, beautiful things I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Give it a listen if you have the time.


	7. Last Shuttle Out Of Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jess learns about the last shuttle out of Earth.

She lays there surrounded by the broken concrete of a dream she spent years working to build and the body of her husband and the bodies of her students and the bodies of the undead and thinks about giving up, giving in.

No one’s left. Not Ryan. Not her family. Not her friends.

No one’s coming. The neighborhoods are empty. Government agents might come by in a few weeks when they do their regular tallies, still trying to track the undead, to track the survivors. But by then it will be too late. She’ll either be dead of dehydration or another zombie horde will come through. 

She hears Nick’s voice in her head. _I believe in you._ It’s enough for her to get up off the ground and start digging herself out.

\---

She travels by foot during the day, but she doesn’t know where she is going. She wanders aimlessly from Oregon down the California coast. She just knows she has to put distance between her and the incident in Portland. She tries to avoid the main roads that leave her exposed and vulnerable to the zombie hordes and desperate human marauders. She gathers food and supplies when she can. Eating food makes her feel sick for a while, but she forces herself to do it so that Ryan and her students didn’t die in vain so that she could live.

\---

In San Francisco, she stumbles upon a benevolent refugee group in a community center composed of broken families, single parents and their children. They invite her in and offer her some of their meager rations and supplies, a hot meal and a working gun for self-defense. They tell her about the last shuttle out of Earth. The world governments are ending the Mars exodus program, citing that the extraordinary expense to maintain the shuttles and the risk to government agents can no longer be justified to rescue the remaining human lives left on Earth. The last shuttle is due to fly out of San Francisco in the next few days. 

\---

The day of the launch, refugees from all the nearby neighborhoods gather around the fence of the launch site. Military soldiers push them away from the fence and lock the gate. The refugees watch from outside the fence as the lucky few enter the shuttle. Everyone crowds close to the fence, pensive and quiet. They watch the shuttle take off from the face of the Earth with an almighty blast, shaking the ground under their feet. The shuttle trails orange flames and gray smoke from its rocket boosters as it quickly disappears into the stratosphere.

For a few minutes everyone just stares at the empty launch site, at the trails of smoke disappearing into the sky. _The left behind._

The refugees disperse shortly afterwards, retreating back into their hidden homes and hideaways before night falls and zombies come out to feed.

She is the last one standing at the gate. She looks up into the sky at where the shuttle disappeared into the ether with her fingers clutching the mesh of the chain-link fence, trying to hang onto the hope and optimism for life that used to come so easily to her. 

She is alone again. 


	8. The Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They find each other again in the city they lived in together from a past life.

After watching the last shuttle leave Earth, Jess feels numb. She can feel her will to live waning but she’s still hanging on, hanging in there. Currently her body’s will to live is stronger than her mind’s will to die. She doesn’t know how much longer she can maintain that balance, keep the scales tipped in favor of “live,” but she still wakes up every day and keeps putting one foot in front of the other. She focuses on the road ahead of her with its thin potential for hope and happiness, and not the terrible road behind her. 

She thinks if this were the movies then Nick would come in to rescue her like always. Her heart feels sad that they never got to see each other again, never got to work things out. She always secretly thought in her heart of hearts that they would see each other again. She thinks it’s probably ridiculous, but she can still feel him alive out there somewhere in the universe. She knows if he could, he would come back to Earth to rescue her even though they haven’t spoken to each other in years and he is probably still mad at her for moving to England with Ryan and getting married to him. She imagines Nick safe and happy on Mars and it warms her from the inside out. 

\---

Jess’s travels down the California coast finally bring her to Los Angeles.

She walks the empty, familiar streets of the city. She is careful to sneak past the alleyways and buildings to avoid any zombies lurking in the tight urban spaces. It reminds her of what she and Ryan taught the kids the first time they had to venture out into the empty Portland neighborhoods right after the government saved everybody else. 

She goes to the loft and it is exactly how she remembers it: the brown couch where they all used to hang out, the sun streaming in through the windows, that familiar indistinct dusty smell that is so firmly tied to her memory. _It’s home._ She goes to her old bedroom and curls up on her old bed and feels safe for the first time in forever. She pretends it is years ago and Nick, Schmidt, and Winston are still somewhere in the apartment. Nick will come home from working late at the bar soon and curl up next to her like he did when they were dating, nuzzling the back of her neck and spooning her to him, keeping her safe. She drifts off to sleep comforted by her memories. 

\---

She is startled awake by a hand on her face. She panics and reaches for her gun but the masked stranger grabs her wrist. Then she hears his voice. 

“Jess! Jess, it’s me.” He takes off his mask so she can see his face.

“Nick?” she stares at him in disbelief. She had just been dreaming about him. Maybe she was still dreaming but she sees that his eyes are different, older. 

He lets go of her wrist.

They stare at each other and the years fall away.

“I thought you were dead,” he breathes out. She can see how much the idea hurt him, like he was the one dying right along with her.

She doesn’t know how much Nick knows about what brought her here. She knows he needs to know about Ryan so she gathers up her courage and tells him. “Ryan died. The infected breached the perimeter of the school. We put the school into lockdown, but we didn’t know that one of the students had already been infected and was barricaded in with us until it was too late. Ryan stayed behind to detonate the building to contain the infected and buy the other students more time to escape, but the detonator was faulty and it went off too soon. The roof collapsed before we could make it out. I was lucky; the majority of the debris missed me and I was able to dig myself out." She pauses as all the details of that terrible day come flooding back to her and in a pained whisper says, "I couldn’t save them.” 

She needs to touch him to make sure he is real, that he is actually here with her and not just a figment of her imagination, of her wishing for him so badly ever since she left him in the airport to move to England. She sits up and touches his face with her hand, her eyes filling up. Her voice full of emotion she asks, "If you thought I was dead, why did you come back?” 

His hand goes up to cup her face, his thumb wiping away a tear that has fallen on her cheek. His molten brown eyes are more dark and intense than she has ever seen them before. 

“Because I could still feel you, Jess. I could still feel that you were alive out there somewhere and even if you weren’t, I could never forgive myself if I didn’t look for you.” 

The emotion in his voice takes her breath away. She has to look away from him. _Why did I ever doubt that you loved me? I don’t deserve you._

She looks back into his face. "How did you even get here, Nick?" 

He shows her his fake ID for interspace Earth travel. She notices it is date-stamped over two months ago. He doomed himself to come looking for her.

"They quarantined the air space a month ago. That means no more flights out of Earth. You can never go home again, Nick. You shouldn’t have come," she says sadly looking away from him again. 

He turns her face back towards him with his hand so she can look him in the eyes. With conviction he says, "Jess, I would rather be stuck here in Hell with you than anywhere else.”

She can’t help the tears that spill from her eyes and she jumps up off the bed to throw her arms around his neck and hug him tightly to her. His arms wrap around her back and she breathes him in. He eventually pulls away from her embrace but his hand trails down her arm so he can take her hand in his. He brushes her knuckles with his thumb. He tells her, "We can’t stay here. The whole city is overrun with infected and there is no electricity or running water." 

He leads her through the doorway of the bedroom, still holding her hand. They pause in the hallway. They look around the loft for the last time. They know they are both remembering their lives here.

They turn to look at each other’s faces. He looks at her with a dark, intense gaze on his face like she is something he has been searching for his entire life, the love of his life, the answer to every single question he has ever asked. He looks at her like she is the most important, precious thing in the entire universe. He warms her all over with his molten eyes. 

She thought time or distance would decrease her feelings for him, but they have only increased her passion, her need for him. She feels that familiar yearning for him to touch her, loving her with his hands the way he used to, to be lost in him as he surrounds her with his entire body, his entire self. 

And there in the hallway where they shared their first kiss all those long years ago, when he cups her face and leans in to kiss her again for the first time in years, she presses forward to meet him, pushes up into him.

She kisses him with everything she has, every last molecule of her being, making up for all that lost time away from him. It feels just as extraordinary as their first kiss, making her see through space and time, but there is an additional exquisite poignancy to it due to their knowing what it feels like to lose each other. 

He finally pulls back and rests his forehead against hers with his eyes closed.

She breathes out, “I love you, Nick. I knew you would come find me. I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew.” 

He opens his eyes gazing at her with all the love he hid away in his heart, in his soul, for years. He is finally able to say to her, the words she has been dying to hear him say ever since they broke up, “I never stopped loving you Jess and I’m never letting you go again.”


	9. Learning To Know You Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick and Jess's roadtrip through the apocalyptic wasteland from Jess's perspective.

They end up in Mexico.

The beachside resort they ran away to after Cece’s first wedding is still there and it’s like a little slice of heaven just waiting for them.

As they drive up the beach towards the resort, she clasps Nick’s hand in hers and squeezes it. He smiles at her and she knows they are both thinking _‘all in’_ all over again and for the rest of their lives.

\---

They are truly blissfully alone in the hotel. For the first time in years, Nick is able to touch her all over again. He undresses her reverently and his hands skim along her sides, along her ribs, remembering the feel of her. His hands are tender and loving, treating her like something precious or like something he will lose. He presses his hand to her heart and she can feel his hands trembling. She can see the swirl of emotions in his eyes, passing over his face, and she can see him fighting the impulse to shut her out, to stop himself from feeling. Trying to let himself feel everything after a lifetime of running scared from love. She takes his shaking hands in hers so he can focus on her instead of the feeling of being overwhelmed. _It’s okay,_ she whispers and she feels his hands still against her, him letting go. He cups her face and leans down to kiss her. He whispers _I love you_ s against her mouth, against her skin, making sure she knows how he feels after a lifetime of keeping it in, loving every inch of her with his words. _Show me,_ she whispers back, so he can show her with his body and his hands everything else he can’t find the words to say to her. They make love on soft linen sheets before they curl up against each other. She falls asleep listening to the peaceful sound of his breathing, the stress of the world washed briefly from his face. 

\---

They pretend they are on vacation. They play True American and chase each other through the empty corridors of the hotel. _She’s missed the sound of his voice, the sound of his laughter, the feel of his warm, rough hand surrounding hers._ They go exploring in the sleepy seaside town near the resort and soak up the sun on the beach. She goes swimming while he watches her from the shore, following her with his eyes until she returns safely to his side.

\---

Spending these days in paradise living in his warm presence, she learns to know him again. He is both intimately familiar and intriguingly new. He is more patient, more loving, unafraid of letting her close to him, letting her in, telling her how he feels, no longer shutting himself off from her.

But on the edges of his love, she can see how terrified he is of losing her all over again. She knows he worries about her. She can see it in his eyes. When she sees that sad faraway look in his eyes, that’s when she touches him, holding his hand, wrapping herself around him, telling him she loves him so he knows she’s there, so he knows she’s real and she isn’t going anywhere.

\---

They stay in the Mexican resort until hurricane season forces them back inland. 

\---

They are on a perpetual roadtrip across the apocalyptic wasteland that was once America.

They visit the Grand Canyon and sleep under the stars. She gets to share what feels like the first sunrise on Earth with him beside her.

They pass through the polar vortex of Colorado and the vast lonely cornfields of Kansas and Missouri. 

They make a pitstop at Nick’s childhood home in Chicago. He doesn’t tell her but she knows his family is gone. Everyone who has lost their family has that same haunted look and you learn to recognize it from other people who have their lost loved ones too. She knows it doesn’t help to talk about it. It’s already happened. Words are useless against that harsh reality. Saying all the words in the entire universe won’t bring them back. What you need is someone to just sit there with you, to feel the presence of another person next to you while you remember everyone who you have lost and everything they have lived through, all the good times and all the bad times too. So she sits there with him on his childhood bed as he feels all his pain. She makes him lie down so he can rest his weary spirit. She hums to him to let him know she’s there until he falls asleep and his mind drifts off into the warm peaceful darkness of slumber. He doesn’t have to talk about it; she knows.

\---

As they travel across America together, she wonders what Nick’s life was like on Mars, but she is too afraid to ask him.

Like always, he can read her like a book. “You can ask me anything, Jess,” he says to her when he catches her glancing at him and then looking away for the millionth time. 

Slowly, she starts to feed her curiosity. 

\---

“Did you ever get married?” she asks one day while they are hiking. 

He shakes his head. “I couldn’t love anybody else, Jess. You were always it for me. If I chose to get into a relationship with anybody else, it meant having to forget a part of you and I couldn’t do that. I just wanted to hold onto you a little longer, even if it was just in my memories.”

Her heart ached for him, up there all alone loving the ghost of her.

He looked over at her. “Don’t be sad for me, Jess,” he said. “I was happy I even got to love you once.”

She stopped him so she could kiss him. She wanted to make sure that he knew that she loved him back the whole time, that while he was loving the ghost of her, she was loving the ghost of him too.

\---

They are sitting cross-legged on their sleeping bags facing each other in a tent at the Grand Canyon. Solar camping lanterns illuminate the inside of their tent, giving it a warm glow. 

She asks him, “Do you hate me for marrying Ryan? For falling in love with him?”

He looks into her face and says with a serious expression. “I could never hate you, Jess.”

He takes a breath before continuing on. “I thought Ryan was good for you. I wasn’t who you needed me to be yet. You had so much love to give and I wanted you to stop loving me so that you could have the life you always wanted. I was holding you back, being selfish for holding onto you when I couldn’t even take care of myself, couldn’t grow up. But I couldn’t stay and watch you love someone else, and I couldn’t let you go, so I took myself out of the equation.”

He pauses and looks away from her. “It killed me when you married Ryan, but he could give you everything I couldn’t.”

She touches his arm so he’ll look back at her. “No he couldn’t, Nick…He couldn’t give me you…” Tears spill from her eyes.

Nick wipes them from her face with his hand. “I’m sorry, Jess. I was being stubborn and stupid and I should have told you how I felt. I should have fought for us. But I was just so lost in my own head, I couldn’t see you anymore.”

He covers her hand with his and squeezes it. “But we’re here together now.”

She squeezes his hand back. 

\---

“Did you ever have kids?” he asks her.

She shakes her head. “I knew Ryan wanted kids but every time I thought about having a family, my children always had your eyes.”

Now it’s his turn to cry. Tears spill from his eyes and he wipes them on the back of his sleeve.

“You would have made a good mother, Jess.”

Shyly, she says, “When we get to Mars, I still want to start a family with you…if that’s what you want too…” 

His smile would eclipse the light from all the stars in the night sky.

He leans in to kiss her. 

“I’d like that, Jess.”


	10. You And Me Against The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knows he wants to save her, but the odds are stacked against them. All she wants is to believe in him, to hold his hand as they approach the inevitable, to love him until she can't anymore.

They find a functioning car in Chicago and take turns driving towards the East Coast. Halfway through Indiana, she knows they are in trouble. More and more of the abandoned storefronts and farms they go exploring in have already been cleaned out, picked through by other survivors. Nick doesn’t say anything but she can see the tension in his jaw get increasingly worse every time they stop in a new place to scavenge for supplies and they come up empty. 

She’s starving and he’s trying to give her all his food but she sneaks it back to him when he isn’t looking; he’s starving too.

She knows this can’t last forever. 

\---

She starts having nightmares when they drive through Ohio. She keeps seeing Ryan getting bitten over and over again in slow motion, helpless to stop it. _If she had moved a little faster, if she had noticed a little sooner…_ All those tiny lives being crushed over and over again because of her and now she’s dragging Nick down right along with her too. 

\---

She can tell Nick is trying to hide something from her; he’s trying to rescue her like always. He never could fight the impulse, even way back when they first met and he pretended to be annoyed by her, to shut himself off from loving her.

She lets him try so he doesn’t feel helpless. They drive into Washington DC and she pretends to be distracted by sightseeing as he sneaks into government buildings, trying to find a way to save them. She knows the chances for success are slim, but she pretends not to know about what he’s doing so that he doesn’t hate himself when he can’t save her, so he never has to tell her he can’t and break her heart.

\---

She’ll keep fighting until the end for him because she knows how desperately he wants her to live, but she knows they are living on borrowed time. She’s grateful they get to be together at the end though. She’ll get to tell him she loves him every day until she can’t anymore and she’ll get to hold his hand as they both slip away. 

\---

They’ve been visiting a lot of these old shuttle launch sites recently. Nick says he’s just feeling nostalgic for his time as an astronaut but she can tell that he’s looking for something. Every time they visit another one of these places, he gets increasingly agitated when he comes out empty-handed.

While Nick goes exploring in the mission control centers of these launch sites, she looks at the posters on the walls, at the photos of a time when space flight was still a nice dream to chase instead of a thin, desperate lifeline. 

She hopes that Nick finds what he is looking for. 

\---

They arrive in Texas and they visit the abandoned NASA facility in Houston.

She stands in the lobby of the NASA Space Center and looks at all the exhibits of space memorabilia, while Nick goes into the mission control center.

When Nick comes racing out of the mission control center and back into the lobby, she braces for the worst news, but one look at his face and she starts crying. He hugs her to him, lifting her off her feet, and spinning her around.

“We’re going home, Jess,” he says tearfully.


	11. Epilogue: Home

They get married on a Tuesday. When she sees the look on his face on the other side of the aisle, she falls in love with him all over again. 

\---

He takes her to see their newly built house by the lake. She knows how much it means to him to be able to give that to her, but she only sees him. She knows why the lake house in Portland never felt quite right. A house needs its soul to be a home; her house is not a home without him in it. His hand is warm around her own leading them into their future. 

\---

She tells him she’s pregnant on a Monday. Words cannot describe how happy it makes her that she got to live long enough to see the overjoyed, ecstatic look on his face when she tells him that he is going to be a father, that she was the one who got to put it there. “We’re going to have a family,” he chokes out. He hugs her to him fiercely and she can feel his happy tears on her shoulder. 

\---

Some days are hard. She remembers what happened back on Earth, all the things she cannot change, her time away from him. But then he puts his arms around her, surrounding her with his whole body, his entire self, his heart, his soul, and she knows she loves him more than life itself, that if she had to fight the entire universe all over again to reach him, she would gladly do it. 

Love is never what you expect it to be, in the best way. It’s when you can finally let go of all the expectations of what you think love should be, letting yourself fall into the infinite possibilities of the universe, that you can truly love and be loved in return. That’s when you can look at this person who sees right into your soul and you can fit against him and support him the way he needs you to. It’s not about what he can give you but about what you can give him, about loving him so he can see the incredible person he is. He needs you, but you need him too. You can both hold up a mirror to each other to show each other your strengths and you provide a safe harbor to support each other no matter what. Love is about believing in the goodness of someone else when they can’t see it in themselves. How you can finally see that he gave you his whole heart, his entire self and how you can hold that vulnerability in your hands and make it grow into something strong and resilient. He needs you but you need him too, to believe in a world that is good and beautiful and decent because he exists. 

\---

She feels the new life within her respond to the sound of his voice and she is happy. She knows this is where they both belong, her hand in his for the rest of their lives and into eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all the readers and commenters who followed me over from "Moving Heaven and Earth To Find You." It's been one long, crazy, emotional journey writing both these fics. I hope this companion piece lived up to your expectations and filled in some of the missing backstory in the original fic. 
> 
> Loved it? Hated it? Want to yell at me about what worked and what didn't? Leave a comment to help me improve my writing!
> 
> Thanks again for reading! Hit me up on Tumblr if you want to geek out about New Girl: ([dreamsofsleepingin.tumblr.com](http://dreamsofsleepingin.tumblr.com)). I post a lot of author's notes and behind-the-scenes commentary about my writing process, my thoughts about New Girl canon, and updates on new stories and fic ideas I'm working on. I do take fic requests so let me know if you have any interesting fic ideas you would like me to explore and I'll see if I can work with them!


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